Hi, my name's John Goldsby you're about to watch a lesson from my course. It's available exclusively at discoverdoublebass.com
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So let's talk about a bass line on the jazz standard Killer Joe
Killer Joe was written in
1960 by Benny Golson a saxophone player and we first saw we first heard the tune on
The Benny Golson Art Farmer Jazztet album called meet the Jazztet. The bass player was Addison Farmer
That's Art Farmer's brother
so Addison Farmer played the original recording of Killer Joe and
Everyone plays Killer Joe from jazz workshops to jam sessions
I hear Christian McBride playing Killer Joe often when he plays with his trio
It's one of those jazz standards that's going to endure for many years
So let's look at this a tune that I wrote on Killer Joe
The a tune starts with a standard bass line in the first eight bars so you often hear people
Playing something like this
On the first two bars, so that's how my a tooth starts
Down the octave
So that's the first eight bars you hear in the last two bars bar seven and eight I play a little drop
The first drop is a dotted eighth sixteenth
The second drop I
Marked as two eighth notes. There's just to me there's a subtle difference between two swing eighth notes and a dotted eighth sixteenth feel
Let's look at the second a section bar nine. It starts with a triad
An inversion of Bb
Now that's a typical Ray Brown lick or a drop from the top of the bass
To the bottom of the bass, Ray Brown recorded Killer Joe with Quincy Jones in
1969 on the album Walking in Space that's a killer version of the tune
and Ray Brown is known for his strong walking lines, but also
for his rhythmic embellishments
You see in measure 13 14 15
There's another triplet drop from the top of the C7 chord
So that's C7
C7
C triad
So here's the second eight bars starting at bar 9
Now the bridge starts on an E minor 7 flat 5 and you see what I did here I
Played the E diminished triad and
then I played the
7th of the E
minor 7 flat 5
The note D and I resolved to the third of the A7
Eb minor, Ab7, A7
Ab7, E minor
So in the last bar of the B section I play a little drop from the A7
I play 2 notes on the A or two times on the A and
Rake over to the E and then the C sharp
The last A has a couple of rhythmic variations in the first bar bar 25
So that goes
see the open G string E
D#, E, open G
D, Bb
Open G. So I use the open G a lot to get from the top of the bass to the bottom of the bass
Last line
So, let's look at the drop that's two bars from the end of the form it starts on a high G
the
third of the C7 the note E
G harmonic, E,
C on the D string
Bb
Open G, E
C
Bb, G, E
Now that's also a typical Ray Brown style drop he loved to play from the top of the bass and play triplets and
land crash land on the bottom of the bass and he
If you listen to Ray Brown a lot, you'll hear that he always lands on his feet. So here's the entire bass line once through
Now let's hear how that sounds with the trio one two three
One two one two three
I Hope you really enjoyed the lesson if you're interested in the course, check out the link below